The Mereological Fallacy in Neuroscience

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Believe it or not, but some philosophers (PMS Hacker) and (neuro)scientists (Mas Bennett) think, and have argued extensively, that contemporary neuroscience is sorely underpinned by widespread conceptual confusion. Today's neuroscientists (Crick, Damasio, etc), they have argued in their voluminous text, are continuing a long Cartesian Dualist tradition...only now instead of predicating of the "mind" certain properties such as "being angered," "being thoughtful," "thinking thus and so," neuroscientists have switched nouns. Now, what philosophers before the advent of neuroscientist attributed to the mind, they, along with neuroscientists, physicalists, reductionists and eliminative materialists attribute to the brain. Chomsky and his crew try to stay out of the metaphysical playground, though their stance is just as confused, and play both cards (the "mind/brain").

Wittgenstein noted that it makes sense to say "it has sensations; it sees, is blind; hears, is deaf; is conscious or unconscious" (Philosophical Investigations, ? 281) only of a human being.

I agree. It makes no sense, and is conceptually incoherent to say that the brain believes, thinks, interprets, loves, is angered, and so on. Thus, it is meaningless, and equally meaningless inferences follow if such conceptual background is admitted into neuroscientific and neurocognitive scientific thinking.

To me, it seems hardly worth arguing for. Another poster of this community noted that if we get accurate predictions from our neural correlates, this warrants out identifying the emotion, for instance, with the the neural-synaptic state. But this is confused, for one is not arguing for a true identity thesis under these terms, for it is by the definition of "correlate" and all its underpinnings that makes it conceptually incoherent to say that the brain, or even worse its neurons, is indeed "content."

It is confused to think that the utterance "I an angry" is a reference to an "internal state" of the brain. It makes no sense to think that my utterance that "I think that cats are furry" is an indication of a brain or mental state.

One immediate problem with this is one that should be readily seen. When you wish to rephrase, or fully restate the activities you've gone through in the process of writing a paper or complete a an intellectually demanding project, you might say to a friend, "I've thought," "I reflected," "I recalled," "I assumed," "I considered," "I reconsidered," and so on. All of these psychological verbs form a vast conceptual structure that pulls and tugs when one term, or verb, is given a sense not familiar, or conventional, to it. Each verb is related and dependent on the others. If you wish to ascribe the psychological predicate of thought, for instance, to the brain, then you must be willing to shift the entire semantic field based on that criterion for application of that verb.

Thus, you must be ready to admit that the brain "reflects," recalls," "assumes," "considers," "reconsiders," and so on. To me, it thus seems obvious that eliminative material about psychological predicate, for instance, is confused. Strong physicalism about mind, too, is utterly confused.

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@nerdfiles,

My gestalt from this is that the things the brain does in order to produce, for instance, vision, cannot be called vision or seeing unto itself. Am I correct in concluding that this argument deems that something like vision is a holistic human experience, and the underlying mechanisms and organs are incidental when talking about seeing?

I understand the point, though I do have a bit of an objection. For most of these neurologically-mediated phenomena, there is no single term that describes it, and the word for the phenomenon is (at least colloquially) a legitimate and understood substitute. Thus, while you might call it fallacious to describe the brain as being angered, I'd challenge you to come up with an alternative that describes the physiologic process that produces this experience.

Here are some other, less nebulous examples where the substitute is awkward. (I say less nebulous because they're easier to demonstrate from a medical point of view).

John had a seizure. John's brain had seizure activity.

John has a glioblastoma multiforme. John's brain has a glioblastoma multiforme.

In the former case, seizure activity can be demonstrated with electroencephalography, whereas the seizure is the phenotype, i.e. what John experiences. In the latter case (a GBM is a kind of brain tumor), the problem is in the word "has". Can a brain "have"? Sure it can -- there are many sub-meanings of the word have. But we could be purely descriptive and say that "John's brain has a glioblastoma multiforme" also has this fallacy, and it should more properly state "There is a glioblastoma multiforme in John's brain".

Am I getting the sense of your argument?

It seems like a bit of minutia to make the point that

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@Aedes,

Aedes;48556 wrote:

My gestalt from this is that the things the brain does in order to produce, for instance, vision, cannot be called vision or seeing unto itself. Am I correct in concluding that this argument deems that something like vision is a holistic human experience, and the underlying mechanisms and organs are incidental when talking about seeing?

To say that X saw Y only makes sense to say of X and not any of X's parts. The organs are instrumental in that the organism must have them in order to be able to see, with variable performance, quality, strength, etc. But it makes no sense to say the eyes see unless one means in a highly technical, which excludes information processing, color processing, recognition, etc. A sense that likely has nothing to do with our conventional meaning of the verb "to see."

Quote:

I understand the point, though I do have a bit of an objection. For most of these neurologically-mediated phenomena, there is no single term that describes it, and the word for the phenomenon is (at least colloquially) a legitimate and understood substitute. Thus, while you might call it fallacious to describe the brain as being angered, I'd challenge you to come up with an alternative that describes the physiologic process that produces this experience.

My friend tells me that he's accidentally crashed my car. I become angry because of that fact. Processes in the brain do not produce the experience on their own. The experience is necessarily social and the predicate of anger depends, at least, on public behavioral criteria. For one, the brain has no means of expressing its angry. What exactly does the brain have to be angry about? It's a brain. Would my brain in fact the thing angered? Would my friend feel guilty because my brain condemned and ridiculed him?

I know this sounds absurd, but what you're trying to advance is an identity thesis. I'd happily admit that neural correlates can steer us in the direction of sets of possible behaviors within a given context, given a certain degree of approximation. It would be tough to do this, but in principle it's feasible. Though no evidence will ever verify that my brain took my mid-term or wrote this post. The brain is not conscious. It is a part of the human organism on which consciousness depends.

Quote:

John had a seizure. John's brain had seizure activity.

John has a glioblastoma multiforme. John's brain has a glioblastoma multiforme.

In the former case, seizure activity can be demonstrated with electroencephalography, whereas the seizure is the phenotype, i.e. what John experiences. In the latter case (a GBM is a kind of brain tumor), the problem is in the word "has". Can a brain "have"? Sure it can -- there are many sub-meanings of the word have. But we could be purely descriptive and say that "John's brain has a glioblastoma multiforme" also has this fallacy, and it should more properly state "There is a glioblastoma multiforme in John's brain".

Am I getting the sense of your argument?

It seems like a bit of minutia to make the point that

Yes, the verb "to have" is appropriately used. But the predicate in question is always important. It is essential that you understand what I'm arguing against. I am arguing that the brain cannot be said to have sensations or be the bearer of psychological predicates. I am not saying "The brain has a certain distinctive color to it" is incoherent. The brain is a physical object. It makes perfect sense to speak of it descriptively about its properties. Thus, this concern is about the kinds of properties which can coherently be attributed to the brain. "is happy," "is orange" and "has seizure activity" are each predicates, but the first cannot be coherently attributed to the brain. The latter two can. The problem is not with the verb "to have" but with psychological predicates. Neither of your examples are of psychological predicates.

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@nerdfiles,

The assumptions of these neuroscientists are no more reasonable than the basis for the most ancient animalistic religion. To speak neurological activities in terms of our experiences (love, hate, thinking about x, believing y, etc.) and/or to call those experiences effects of the actions of the brain, is akin to speaking of the 'voice of the winds' or the 'wrath of the ocean:' i.e. simple personification.

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@nerdfiles,

Nerdfiles,

This all makes sense to me. I think that in life, and particularly in clinical medicine (in which we have to explain complex technical things to patients who lack medical training), we engage in this fallacy for reasons of colloquial accessibility.

More familiar to me is the fallacy of teleology, which is something that's drilled out of our heads from the early days of med school. For instance the stomach doesn't secrete pepsin in order to digest protein... there is no "in order to" in biology except in a de facto way that results from mechanisms (that have incidentally been preserved by evolution because of their beneficial functions).

What is the etymology of mereology, by the way?

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@Aedes,

[< Polish mereologia (S. Le

http://dictionary.oed.com.ezproxy.lib.uwm.edu/graphics/parser/gifs/mb/sacu.gif

niewski 1927 (in form mereologja), in Przegld Filozoficzny 30 166), irregularly < ancient Greek

http://dictionary.oed.com.ezproxy.lib.uwm.edu/graphics/parser/gifs/mb/mu.gif

http://dictionary.oed.com.ezproxy.lib.uwm.edu/graphics/parser/gifs/mb/geacu.gif

http://dictionary.oed.com.ezproxy.lib.uwm.edu/graphics/parser/gifs/mb/rho.gif

http://dictionary.oed.com.ezproxy.lib.uwm.edu/graphics/parser/gifs/mb/omicron.gif

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part (see MERO- comb. form1) + -ologia (see -OLOGY comb. form).]

Def: The formal study of the relations between parts and wholes.

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@Aedes,

Aedes wrote:

Nerdfiles,

This all makes sense to me. I think that in life, and particularly in clinical medicine (in which we have to explain complex technical things to patients who lack medical training), we engage in this fallacy for reasons of colloquial accessibility.

More familiar to me is the fallacy of teleology, which is something that's drilled out of our heads from the early days of med school. For instance the stomach doesn't secrete pepsin in order to digest protein... there is no "in order to" in biology except in a de facto way that results from mechanisms (that have incidentally been preserved by evolution because of their beneficial functions).

What is the etymology of mereology, by the way?

My high school anatomy teacher drove me insane with that...of course, he was an idiot anyway...:brickwall:

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@BrightNoon,

An interesting presentation--and very new to me (not that that would really mean anything, however). I do hope to look into this a bit more, and get a better understanding of the core concepts of the presentation.

One spirit which I percieve behind the curtain of the OP, is that of the desire to encourage a quicker adaptation of language terms, so as to help the language catch up with the learning that is occurring. I have found problems, myself.

I will take the position, however, that the language used, while not perfect due to its age, is sufficient enough for allowing sense to be reached when backed up with a more fully developed explanation.

What might be required to see a human being as having sensory input, or being in a state of a certain functional activity as regards any cognitive process at all--be it neuron migration, prunning, or lessened inhibitory processes allowing a person to get in their car, drive some distant, and then kill a few people without ever having awakened?

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@nerdfiles,

nerdfiles wrote:

I agree. It makes no sense, and is conceptually incoherent to say that the brain believes, thinks, interprets, loves, is angered, and so on. Thus, it is meaningless, and equally meaningless inferences follow if such conceptual background is admitted into neuroscientific and neurocognitive scientific thinking.

To me, it seems hardly worth arguing for. Another poster of this community noted that if we get accurate predictions from our neural correlates, this warrants out identifying the emotion, for instance, with the the neural-synaptic state. But this is confused, for one is not arguing for a true identity thesis under these terms, for it is by the definition of "correlate" and all its underpinnings that makes it conceptually incoherent to say that the brain, or even worse its neurons, is indeed "content."

It is confused to think that the utterance "I an angry" is a reference to an "internal state" of the brain. It makes no sense to think that my utterance that "I think that cats are furry" is an indication of a brain or mental state.

I think you are playing around here. To call these mental properties "correlates" assumes that mind/brain dualism, as if we accept physicalism, they are not the correlates of emotion, but the properties of emotion. It is not conceptual founding of physicalism that is the problem, but the inability to separate physicalism with common understanding of a conscious identity that is the problem.

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@BrightNoon,

BrightNoon;49192 wrote:

My high school anatomy teacher drove me insane with that...of course, he was an idiot anyway...

He drove you insane by talking teleologically, or by trying to stop you from talking teleologically?

I'll talk teleologically to patients to help them understand complex processes, but that's a colloquialism meant to simplify complicated stuff for laypeople.

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@Mr Fight the Power,

Mr. Fight the Power;50184 wrote:

I think you are playing around here. To call these mental properties "correlates" assumes that mind/brain dualism, as if we accept physicalism, they are not the correlates of emotion, but the properties of emotion. It is not conceptual founding of physicalism that is the problem, but the inability to separate physicalism with common understanding of a conscious identity that is the problem.

"Playing around"? This means?

No one is calling mental properties correlates. If anything, I was relaying an, albeit overly general on my part, claim of another poster. If I'm interpreted to be saying anything about NCs at all, it should be that I'm saying emotional states have NCs.

Saying that something has something is not at the same to say that it is that something. It's a rather innocuous claim to make that a neural state correlates with a emotional state.

Again, no one is calling mental properties anything; I wouldn't even want to really say the mental has properties. But that's a claim for another time. I can't really address your claim about physicalism since your qualm about calling things what they shan't be labeled really addresses an appellation that never occurred.

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@nerdfiles,

nerdfiles wrote:

To me, it seems hardly worth arguing for. Another poster of this community noted that if we get accurate predictions from our neural correlates, this warrants out identifying the emotion, for instance, with the the neural-synaptic state. But this is confused, for one is not arguing for a true identity thesis under these terms, for it is by the definition of "correlate" and all its underpinnings that makes it conceptually incoherent to say that the brain, or even worse its neurons, is indeed "content."

Your use of the word "correlate" does not seem honest to the typical use in neuroscience.

In materialistic monism synapses are only "correlates" in terminology and not actually separable from the mental events with which they are identified.

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@KaseiJin,

I realize that I was not clear enough with it, but had intended for the question quoted below to have been directed towards nerdfiles.

KaseiJin;50173 wrote:

What might be required to see a human being as having sensory input, or being in a state of a certain functional activity as regards any cognitive process at all--be it neuron migration, prunning, or lessened inhibitory processes allowing a person to get in their car, drive some distant, and then kill a few people without ever having awakened?

While the question may not appear, on the surface, to have relevancy, please do extend me the benefit of the doubt (in that I fully reason that it does). I would appreciate a response, when you have the time, nerdfiles.

Thank you.

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@nerdfiles,

I'm not quite sure I understand what the question is asking. It seems to be asking one thing but imposing a certain kind of answer to anyone who answers it. The latter part of it "without being awake" presupposes that I answer the question about a certain and narrow class of human experience (sleep walking). Naturally, answering a question about the phenomena of sleep walking has little to do with normal human experience. Were human experience to involve sleep walking most of the time, then perhaps our criteria for saying that someone is in a "cognitive state" is different. But then again, we don't go around saying, "Ah, you're cognitive. Good, let's chat." "Cognitive" is a rather cumbersome, narrow, and specialized term.

We usually take a person to be in a "state of functional activity" based on a public criteria. So, if a person is conscious, responsive, attentive, engaged.

Public criteria is important.

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@nerdfiles,

I appreciate your getting back on that, nerdfiles; thanks. LOL...me and my wordiness; yes I do do some real jobs of kind of cluttering things up sometimes...I hope that fault can be forgiven. Let me see if I can make it clearer.

In the OP, the following had been given:

[indent]Wittgenstein noted that it makes sense to say "it has sensations; it sees, is blind; hears, is deaf; is conscious or unconscious" (Philosophical Investigations, ? 281) only of a human being.(bold mine)[/indent]

If we accept that there is more to visual information than merely cognition of it at a certain level of awareness (x-cf. inattentional blindness), or that the processing of auditory information can be knocked out while the sensory cilia and nerves themselves are intact and working, or even, that auditory congnition can be produced without external sensory input, then it would seem that we would, in all fairness of evidence, say that brain is the core of the matter here, would we not? The question had been to draw out a boundry of term definition.

We can look at the human being, the person, and public criteria, and stop there, I would agree. But I would wonder whether it would not be just as practical to go a bit deeper. What would be required as a base to see a human as having those things mentioned? I would answer that with 'a certain degree (qual./quan) of living brain (in the collective non-count form).

I would think that fair enough; what would you think?

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@nerdfiles,

Never do I deny that a normal functioning brain satisfies a necessary condition for all those human activities that we call "conscious," "engaged," "attentive," etc. The brain is essential (necessary) to make certain public criteria possible. So, in the general case of the term (human being), the human being's disposition to cry or become angry necessarily presupposes a certain level or configuration of brain functioning.

Thus, I assent to your claim that there need be a "certain degree of living brain." I am not entirely sure what that entails or implies, but nevertheless, I think it safe to agree with it.

When you use terms like "core of the matter" and "a certain degree," it is very important that you flesh out what these terms mean. Otherwise, I feel I may find myself assenting to a poetic device or a figurative term that I might very well do not understand the meaning of. Essentially, what does it mean to say "such-and-such is the core of the matter"? By saying this, in the case of cognitive neuroscience, are we giving our ontology to the category mistake, such as the one I am trying to rid us of? By saying "the core of the matter" are you attempting to, in a round-about way, imply that the brain can be predicated with such terms as "being angry," "being thoughtful," "being respectful", "having paid attention {in class yesterday}?"

It is essential that we have a brain in order to be angry, thoughtful, respectful, and to have had paid attention to things in the past as well as to pay attention in the present and future. But no (empirical) evidence will make the proposition "Indeed, my brain felt hurt by your rudeness yesterday" have sense.

Drilling "deeper" down into the complexities of the brain will not make that statement have sense. The experience of thought is not just more neurons being at work. Thought is of a category quite other than physical categories. Whether or not it is "mental" is another question. "The mental" as an ontological category is quite troublesome to deal with, but the psychological sciences are perhaps the best avenue to take. The neuro-psychological sciences may work with neuroscientists to correlate psychological predicates with neural states, but it still remains that no psychological predicate can be logically, or conceptually, identified with a neural state. And it is especially conceptually flawed to reduce one to the other (strong identification/reductionist/eliminativist).

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@nerdfiles,

nerdfiles;50899 wrote:

The neuro-psychological sciences may work with neuroscientists to correlate psychological predicates with neural states, but it still remains that no psychological predicate can be logically, or conceptually, identified with a neural state. And it is especially conceptually flawed to reduce one to the other (strong identification/reductionist/eliminativist).

I think it's pretty clearly a colloquialism and not a fallacy to utter a phrase like "my brain became angry". It's sort of self-evident that anger in the brain is a different phenomenon than anger to the person. But as I mentioned in an earlier post, we may not have a name for the neurological state that corresponds to a given individual experience, and thus a phrase like "become angry" might legitimately have contextually different meanings.

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@Aedes,

Aedes wrote:

I think it's pretty clearly a colloquialism and not a fallacy to utter a phrase like "my brain became angry". It's sort of self-evident that anger in the brain is a different phenomenon than anger to the person. But as I mentioned in an earlier post, we may not have a name for the neurological state that corresponds to a given individual experience, and thus a phrase like "become angry" might legitimately have contextually different meanings.

To claim that it is a "colloquialism" is to take a stance that is inconsistent with the practices of contemporary neuroscientists. In effect, you are not defending contemporary neuroscience proper, but a preconceived idea of what takes place in neuroscientific literature.

Were it to be mere colloquialism, neuroscientists, etc. may be able to justify their stances (supposing they maintain consistent understanding that it is mere "informal language"). But the question is: When is it simply abbreviation and when is it not? Contemporary neuroscientific literature does not even seem to play that game. It is bold-faced in its claims about what the brain's capacities are, those capacities being what should only apply to the human organism. For instance, Francis Crick writes:

[INDENT]What you see is not what is really there; it is what your brain believes is there.... Your brain makes the best interpretation it can according to its previous experience...

[/INDENT]This is not "colloquialism." So I am not sure who you are defending. Perhaps you are defending the "idiomatic way of speaking" or the fa?on de parler. I assure, if you are doing this, I am on your side. Indeed, it is part of my own argument that idiomatic and colloquial ways of talking are just that. They are means of communicating ideas, not to be taken "literally" or "metaphorically." They are idiom.

"My mind feels heavy," for example, is not a statement about the brain, nor is it a statement about some metaphysical or immaterial entites. It is an expression of one's feeling at the moment, or an expression of one's burden with a multitude of thoughts which are stressful, etc. We are not to take the noun phrase "my mind" as literal or figurative. The expression's purpose is not to talk about the brain or to talk about the mind. Neither object is the concern here; the concern is the person's mood and the person's attempt to communicate, perhaps, a disposition to be inattentive or preoccupied, or something like this.

Now, however, the hyperreductive neuroscientist and eliminative materials and physicalists (as they naturally are) are absolutely not just talking colloquialism. It is important that we each understand exactly that school of thought to which I am arguing against.

I am not arguing against the fa?on de parler, for that is my own argument. I am not arguing against colloquialism or against figures of speech, for these are that class of expression to which I am defending.

I am arguing against those who claim that "such neurons [as respond in a highly specific manner to, e.g., line orientation] have knowledge" (Colin Blakemore).

Understand that I am not arguing against minor theories here and there, which are moderate, but I am arguing against hyperreductive theories which are, to say the least, mature and highly controversial in themselves.

I am not arguing that a normal functioning brain is not a necessary condition for conciousness.

To those who claim that the "brain" is merely shorthand for the "mind," I find this concept just as confused, if not more, than the identity theory of mind/brain. If the mind is of a category utterly distinct from the brain, then it equally makes no sense to claim that the brain is a "fill-in-the-blank" for the mind. The brain is not some "different" kind of mind. It is not a mind at all.

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@nerdfiles,

nerdfiles;50916 wrote:

To claim that it is a "colloquialism" is to take a stance that is inconsistent with the practices of contemporary neuroscientists. In effect, you are not defending contemporary neuroscience proper, but a preconceived idea of what takes place in neuroscientific literature.

I was commenting on the use of language and not on neuroscientists' jargon. Is it common practice for a neuroscientist to use a phrase like "the brain became angry" in formal scientific writing? (by this I mean original research articles in journals)

nerdfiles wrote:

For instance, Francis Crick writes:

[INDENT]What you see is not what is really there; it is what your brain believes is there.... Your brain makes the best interpretation it can according to its previous experience...[/indent]

This just does not resemble scientific writing. This sounds like something dumbed down for a college textbook, or at worst an editorial.

I may be projecting a bit because I don't follow trends in basic neuroscience very closely, but when someone uses a phrase like "neurons have knowledge", it seems that they're using that word by way of analogy for something they do have. Just like teleology is helpful in communication, even though it's fundamentally incorrect.

nerdfiles wrote:

Perhaps you are defending the "idiomatic way of speaking" or the fa?on de parler. I assure, if you are doing this, I am on your side. Indeed, it is part of my own argument that idiomatic and colloquial ways of talking are just that. They are means of communicating ideas, not to be taken "literally" or "metaphorically." They are idiom.

Yup, we're in agreement.

My brother hates it when people use the word "literally" to mean things that they don't literally mean. For instance, if I say "My heart was literally beating out of my chest" or "My head felt like it was literally going to explode", well, I'm using literally figuratively. Go figure Very Happy

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@nerdfiles,

Granted, Crick was at the forefront of the neuroscientific turn. But I highly doubt the point is a fruitful one that a claim does not look, stylistically, like "science" and that this is supposed to deny it from being "legitimately" advanced as a scientific claim. I doubt Crick et al, during the humble beginnings of contemporary neuroscience took themselves to be advancing bogus metaphysics or mere conjecture. (Like how creationists call the scientific theory of evolution just a theory.)

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The Mereological Fallacy in Neuroscience

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